


We Can Rest Assured

by SilverLynxx



Category: Rush (2013)
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Niki Lauda Appreciation, minor feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 18:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1314790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverLynxx/pseuds/SilverLynxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was Niki Lauda and he did not need to be reassured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can Rest Assured

Niki had always possessed an admiral level of self-assurance. He knew where his skills lay, he told things as they were, and he accepted what life gave him. He had never been self-conscious about his temperament or his looks; he accepted that he was short, and, yes, he was rather rat-like with his prominent overbite and large teeth. He wasn’t conventionally attractive, he and everyone else knew it, yet it did not bother him, because he was Niki Lauda and that was his lot in life. Niki did not require reassurance for who or what he was.

After Nurburgring ’76 it was as if nothing changed, he was just as demanding and as brusque as he had been when he’d first set foot on the track in Formula 3. He called people out on their bullshit, re-established his place on the rostrum, and told insolent journalists trying to get a rise out of him forthright to get the fuck out of his face. Then he stared them down until they did.

But there were cracks in his stoicism, cracks that seemed to grow larger and more prominent when people were unable to meet his eye. People who looked over his shoulder rather than at his face. Cracks that made Niki feel vulnerable and exposed when people - drivers, journalists, spectators - openly gawked at his ruined face, and when he couldn’t stop himself flinching at unexpected contact. No one really noticed because Niki was Niki, and it was universally accepted that nothing perturbed the hard-assed Austrian.

But James noticed.

Niki did not require reassurance, because he knew he was skilled and clever, but sometimes it helped in ways he couldn’t explain. He never balked when he felt the sudden pressure of James’ hand on his hip, or cupping the back of his neck. Or even when his fingers gently mapped out the bumped and blistered skin of Niki’s ravaged but slowly healing wounds. He didn’t feel uncomfortable in the face of James’ smiling baby blue eyes when they lingered on him with a long and contemplative stare. And he only responded to James’ tongue-in-cheek comments about his looks with an elbow and muttered “ _Asshole,”_ as he pulled down his cap and turned away so that James wouldn’t see the corners of his mouth twitch upwards.

He was Niki Lauda and he did not need to be reassured. He accepted what life had given him and he did not complain, because he survived. But sometimes he was thankful for James Hunt nonetheless.

 


End file.
